africa

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
tion Millennium Development Goal with a broader target that credits countries for
achievements in secondary and post-secondary education, including vocational
and technical education.
Moving beyond the investment climate, aid can make an important contribution to
the industrialization strategy outlined above. International support for an export push
should consist of aid to improve trade logistics, policies to increase preferential market
access, and support for regional integration. Donors can help build firm capabilities
by assisting African governments to develop effective foreign investment promotion
agencies. They can also help “import” global best practices by supporting networks
of related manufacturing companies to whom advice is provided on how to meet
international standards of quality and production (Sutton, 2005). Another promising
area for capability building is management training. 4 Traditional donors have
tended to neglect special economic zones. China, on the other hand—building on
its own success with spatial industrial policies—has launched a recent initiative to
build export-oriented special economic zones in Africa (Brautigam and Tang, 2011).
Other donors can learn from the Chinese experience.
8.6 Conclusions
Africa’s employment problem is a deficiency of good jobs. Rapid population growth
has resulted in rapid growth of the labor force and increasing pressures on the job
market, especially for the young. Job creation in high-productivity sectors such as
industry has failed to keep pace. To avoid an African Spring the continent must
industrialize in the broad sense of creating many more high-productivity manufacturing
and tradable services firms.
Meeting the challenge of industrialization will need new thinking. While investment
climate reforms are essential, they need to be reprioritized and refocused. Urgent
action is needed to address Africa’s growing infrastructure and skills gap with the
rest of the world. In addition, governments will need to focus on three interrelated
objectives: creating an export push, building firm capabilities, and supporting agglomerations.
Aid can assist, but it must change.
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